Dudu No More!

Dudu the tame budgie has moved on! he was found at the bottom of his cage with his legs facing the sky, he was the kid's pet and they loved the fact that he flew around the room and landed on their shoulders and fingers, he was a bit annoying at times as he liked picking on our ears but he was cute and fun, the kids cried their eyes out, I was not there when it happened but got a phone call telling me that Dudu is no more! with lots of crying and tears, later on when I was home, Dudu was not there anymore, I asked Aida what did you do with him? she said they wrapped him in a plastic bag and put him in the rubbish bin!! I burst out laughing, I told the kids that after all those tears I expected a dignified burial in the garden, they looked embarrassed but at least they laughed a lot and cheered up after this sad event.

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Few days ago I decided it was time to upgrade my video copy of the film Lion Of The Desert which tells the story of the struggle of Libyan people headed by Omar Al-Mokhtar against the Italian occupiers, I thought it was about time to get the DVD so I checked Amazon and they had a double disk version containing Lion of the Desert and The Message together and at only £5.28p what a bargain! today I received the pack, I cant wait to watch both movies again, it has been many years since I have seen any of them.

Music Lover sent me the link to the following video recently, its called London 10 Quirky Places, I thought it was really good as it was full of little secrets that many of us living in London had no idea about, my favourite secret is the tiny replica of St. Paul's cathedral attached to the side of Vauxhall Bridge:

if you know London, you will like this

Award, Talent & Pictures....

Dear Mrs. on the edge has given me a blog award, I am honoured and very pleased, this is her reason for my award: "The next person would be Anglo-Libyan who always has something interesting and new to share about Libya ", Thank you so much on the edge and Field of Dreams for giving me the award.

The award is:

1. a dedication for those who love blogging and love to encourage friendships through blogging
2. to seek the reasons why we all love blogging.

The aims of this award:

1. Put the award in one post as soon as you receive it.
2. Don't forget to mention the person who gives you the award.
3. Answer the award's question by writing the reason why you love blogging.
4. Tag and distribute the award to as many people as you like.
5. Don't forget to notify the award receivers and put their links in your post.

The reason why I love blogging? that's a bit difficult to answer, I just enjoy writing about my life, the good and the bad, blogging relaxes me and cheers me up, it can be stressful at times but nothing in life is stress free.

Through blogging I got to know many good people, some are Libyan, some are of different nationalities and religion, this made my world wider and a lot more interesting.

About distributing the award, I find this part very difficult as I do like everyone and therefore I would like to give it to everyone on my blog list as I do enjoy reading all of them :o)

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OK now for my weekly Britain's got Talent newest talent worthy of mentioning, Holly Steel is a 10 years old sweet girl, she came on stage dressed as a little ballerina and started doing a ballet dance, nothing special so far but as soon as she opened her mouth and started singing and .......... wow!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmmbH7iGzTw

Some pictures that I thought look very artistic, I am not sure if they are trick photos or the real thing but they are amazing to look at:

Customs & Gnomes!

Two days ago I was watching a documentary series on TV called Customs UK, this program follows the work of customs men and women working at British airports and sea ports, mainly trying to catch people smuggling illegal goods such as drugs and so on, I was sort of watching but without much attention when the program moved to Portsmouth sea port where they were unloading cars coming from Europe, suddenly it grabbed my attention, this car was coming from Libya, the driver drove over 2000 miles to come to the UK, when they stopped the well spoken Libyan man they found out that although he is a resident in Britain but he has been away for 2 months, he said he was in Libya for the month of Ramadan and stayed longer for holiday then bought this car secondhand and now he has brought it with him, the customs people became suspicious of him, one of them said that the car looked too clean and in immaculate condition, they suspected that he might be trying to smuggle drugs or even tortoises as one of them said!

They searched his bags but everything was in order, they then decided to call a car specialist to give the car a thorough search in case of any illegal drugs contained within the metal frame, the Libyan guy became a bit agitated and said he was worried that they might damage his car, they told him to wait in the waiting room while they wait for the inspection to finish, by then the customs men were even more suspicious of him because he became agitated, they thought he was either smuggling drugs or just nervous because he was very attached to his car! by then I was getting a bit worked up, I really liked the Libyan guy, with all that he was still composed and very polite and I was hoping that they were wrong about him, the suspense was becoming too much, is he a drug smuggler? maybe his car is stuffed full of tortoises! what is the result of the search? the program then left us in suspense and moved to Gatwick airport where a woman suspected of swallowing packages containing cocaine was being arrested, it turned out to be a false alarm then we moved somewhere else where a middle age man from the Caribbean was caught with 2KG of cocaine in his suit case, he was eventually set to jail for a long sentence, serve him right.

But what about our Libyan friend? well eventually the program went back to Portsmouth, the car specialist looked and inspected the car but luckily found nothing, as it turned out to be, the Libyan guy was so proud of his precious car, he did not want anyone damaging it and that is what made him agitated, typical Libyan I would say! the customs men apologised to him and told him that he can leave, he was very funny and joked with them about non existent scratches on his car then he drove his precious car away, I was so relieved, he did from the beginning seem to me to be a decent good guy, best of luck to him.

After that I watched a gardening program, they had a report about this middle aged English man who runs a sanctuary for stressed and abused and homeless......guess what? GNOMES! yes stupid gnomes, I mean how dumb is that?? the guy was talking about gnomes as if they were real people, I think he should get a proper job or even a life! what a waste of space, I think he just was trying to expand his gnome collection which filled up his garden and made it look ghastly, he was only in my opinion trying to get people to give him their unwanted gnomes, the world is full of weirdos!

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After last week's amazing performance of Susan Boyle on Britain's got Talent which I posted about Here, we got another amazing performance by a 12 years old boy from Wales called Shaheen, his voice is quite amazing but probably will not last for long as soon the voice will break, the performance was stopped by Simon Cowell who asked the boy to sing another song as the first song did not work, this seemed a bit suspicious and made the whole thing look like if it was fixed, still the boy did will and apparently his father is Iranian.

Unfortunately as with Susan Boyle's videos on YouTube, ITV has suspended the embedding of videos on websites and blogs but you can click on the following link to watch Shaheen sing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVU4IkzMNIo

Amr Diab vs Salam Kadri!

Salam Kadri - سلام قدري

While I am not a fan of Amr Diab or any of the many singers these days that depend more on sound effects and dancers with hardly any clothes on to promote their music than their own talent, I read online about the new war raging since the release of Amr Diab's new album " Kuluh elah Habibi كله الا حبيبي" apparently some Libyan people noticed that the tune to the main song also called كله الا حبيبي comes from an old Libyan song performed in the 60s by the much respected Libyan singer Salam Kadri سلام قدري by the name of "Al-Maktoub المكتوب", an article here has been written about how Amr Diab actually stole the music from the old Libyan song, modernised it and gave it a lot of catchy beat to turn it into a hit while at the same time not mentioning anything about its origin, in fact apparently he claimed that he composed the music, I checked some of the Libyan websites that have Libyan music links on them but Salam Kadri's music wasn't working on any of them, then I searched YouTube and surprisingly I found a video posted by a Libyan calling himself "SalamKadri" after the Libyan singer, in this video both the old Libyan version and the new Amr Diab version were posted to compare both songs, when I heard Salam Kadri singing, it instantly came back to my mind, I remember this song from my childhood, while the music and singing is much slower than the new version but I am sure it is the same song, in fact the more I listen to Amr Diab's song the more I am convinced that it is a Libyan tune that may have been used in many Libyan songs since old Libyan music used to use a lot of folkloric Libyan tunes and it is possible that Salam Kadri made this song (some say it was composed by the Libyan composer Ali Maher) using an old traditional Libyan music which as I mentioned was common then.
Of course on YouTube nothing goes quietly, it seems many Libyans and Egyptians are at each others throats making accusations and insulting each other, it was actually quite sad to read some Egyptian comments insulting the Libyan singer Salam Kadri when he did nothing wrong, he is as far as I know ill and in hospital انشاء الله بالشفاء , Salam Kadri is well known for being a respectable classy classic Libyan singer that never depended on a parade of semi naked women to popularise his songs, something that can not be said about Amr Diab but all to his or her own, in fact the insults have even reached the whole Libyanpopulation now by some of these ignorant people and I am sure some ignorant Libyans will eventually do the same, the fact that many people forget whether Amr Diab did steal this music or not is that Amr Diab only became popular after singing the music of Hamid Al-Shaari and Nasser Mezdawi, both of whom are Libyan and well known in their own rights.
In the mean time, if this accusation is true, what is going to happen about it? the answer as in many other similar cases is Nothing!
Salam Kadri is probably not in a state to fight this case, the Libyan authorities will as usual do nothing, Libyan music has been used without permission by other Arab artists before yet no one did anything, if this music was stolen, then it will be added to the very long list of stolen Libyan treasures that includes wealth, artifacts, identity and now even culture, most of us can not do anything but write about such cases without much hope on anything to be done about them, what a shame!
Here is the YouTube video comparing the 2 songs followed by Amr Diab's full version, listen to them and decide:

Apparently I read somewhere that Amr Diab's new album has not been officially released and that he would probably put on the album that this song is based on Libyan folkloric music, we shall see!

A Star Is Born...

Last night a new series of Britain's got Talent started on TV, I sometimes like watching it for a laugh as many freaks try to convince the judges of their non existent talents although occasionally you get the odd talented person that really wows everyone.
Last night there was one audition that everyone including the judges thought it was going to be a joke and a big laugh, Susan Boyle is a lets just say very average 47 years old woman who's ambition is to become a singer, we all laughed at her at first, I mean how can she be a singer with those looks and funny sense of humour, the judges were prepared for yet another awful performance and a laugh, when asked what she was going to sing, Susan replied: I am going to sing " I dreamed a dream" from Les Miserables. this is one hell of a beautiful song, surely she was going to make a mess of it!!
Well, please listen to her singing:

The judges and audience could not believe their ears, she wowed everyone with her beautiful voice, I think here is a lesson for everyone, it is true that we should not judge a book by its cover, looks like a Star was Born in Britain yesterday.

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Today is Easter Sunday, I would like to wish all of our Christian brothers and sisters in Palestine and all over the a world a Happy & Peaceful Easter.

Baba, I am Bored!!

Its that time of year again, the Easter school holidays started few days ago and all you keep hearing from the kids is " Baba I am bored!" as usual the problem is where to take them or what to do, actually the mistake is to do many things in one day because the next day you will again hear " Baba I am bored!".
We had a nice day at the weekend, we went to see Monsters vs Aliens 3D , it was fun, the kids enjoyed it a lot, the 3D effects were the best I have seen so far, no wonder they make you pay an arm and a leg to watch it!

After the film we enjoyed a Turkish meal suitable only for carnivores as the monster plate we shared contained every imaginable piece of grilled meat, it was lovely.

Tomorrow Amir is invited to a Dr.Who kids party which should keep him happy, Aida was invited too but she chose not to go since its Amir's friend' party (Bilal) plus she has to study as she has a test at the Arabic school on Saturday.

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I got this email from Music Lover (thank you) I thought it was funny and I hope he doesn't mind me sharing it :o)

BLACK IS IN

The most powerful politician in the world is Black.








The head of the Republican National Committee is Black.






The best known media mogul on earth is Black.









The greatest golfer in the world is Black.







The top female tennis players in the world are Black.






The highest grossing actor worldwide is Black.








The fastest racing driver in the world is Black.






The brightest Astrophysicist under the sun is Black.







The Superbowl-winning Head Coach is Black.






The most successful brain surgeon in the world is Black.







The fastest human on the planet is Black









... Michael Jackson must be kicking himself in the ass.

Respecting Women

When I wrote my lost post "Autumn Thunder" there was an issue I wanted to write about but I was not sure if I should, anyway it had nothing to do with the event it self but with mainly the Libyan community in London, as I walked in the hotel I found most of the invited people standing outside the hall where the film was going to be screened as the doors were still closed, I noticed very few ladies there, they were standing with their partners, about 20 minutes later I saw a member of staff open one of the hall's doors slightly then suddenly from no where I saw a group of Libyan ladies, about 15 or 20 run past us and straight into the whole, it really was like a flash then the member of staff closed the door, obviously they were hidden somewhere out of sight until some body asked the organisers to open the door for them to keep them away from prying male Libyan eyes!!!! after the doors were open for the rest of us to go in the event hall, the first thing I noticed was how all the ladies were seated right at the back all in one group in a segregated section, I immediately looked at the few ladies I saw in the beginning who were standing with their partners, they all looked puzzled and confused, I am sure they wanted to sit with their families but eventually decided to segregate from their families and sat at back with the other ladies and they really did not look very happy, if you check the pictures of the same event that took place in Washington DC and in Oslo you will notice that Libyan ladies attended both of these events too but rightly they sat with their families as full members of the Libyan community, they were not herded and hidden at the back as if they were something to be ashamed of, I myself did not take my family as they had to attend Arabic school on that day and did not have time to come to this event but if they did attend I was not going to let them sit away from me, most of the ladies there were young, probably did not know much about Libya, so wouldn't it have been better if they sat with their fathers or husbands who would have explained things to them especially that the film was full of old historical facts!! by letting them all sit together at the back they had no chance of asking any one if they had a question and to be honest I do find things like that a bit insulting, this was not a social event, it was an educational respectable event full of respectable people, we were not there to ogle women and make a pass at them, after all these same ladies go to mixed schools and colleges, they use mixed transport and do their shopping in mixed stores, the silly thing is that who ever decided that women are to sit at the back probably thought it was best to not draw any attention to them, they did the exact opposite, the only lady I saw sitting with everyone else was European.

They got it right in Washington DC and in Oslo but in London, well as usual we got it wrong, no surprise there!

I know some people will not like what I wrote but I meant it in the best most tasteful way, it has nothing to do with being a westerner or modern but all to do with respecting our Libyan ladies and accepting their place along side their brothers, fathers, husbands and sons, that is not wrong.